Between Kant and Gadamer: Classical metaphysics of time between an empty and an embodied temporality

ABSTRACT This article discusses the phenomenon of presence as it appears in the classical metaphysics of time by distinguishing between an empty and an embodied time. The terms “empty” and “embodied” are derived from various studies by Lucian Hölscher. According to him, an empty time offers a framework for knowledge without historiographical content, in which all kinds of historiography can find their place. An embodied time, he says, encompasses all histories ever written, making it impossible to view history as collectively singular, as German historical theorist Reinhart Koselleck would have it. Hölscher prefers an empty time, based on knowledge he derives from Newton and Kant. I think the terms “empty” and “embodied” have different connotations. In an embodied time, past, present, and future have presence; in an empty time, such a presence is absent. The embodied time as I use in this article was largely elaborated by Hans-Georg Gadamer. For him, “embodied” means that past, present, and future are present. This idea is based on an implicit premise about the relationship between reality (from the past) and the human mind. Empty time presupposes a gap between the two, with the mind largely constructing the reality of the past. Embodied time presupposes an intertwining of reality and mind, so that past, present, and future have their own presence, without being completely mutually exclusive. As such, all three have a degree of autonomy when it comes to describing them. An empty time, represented by Kant, and an embodied time, represented by Gadamer, can form the extremes of a scale whose interspace allows the classical metaphysics of time to find its way.